To make the actors more comfortable, the director and the cameramen were stripped naked while filming the orgy scene.
During auditioning and casting, any interested actors were to submit a 10-minute video of themselves describing an important sexual experience. The director received approximately 500 tapes.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was going to fire Sook-Yin Lee when they learned that she was going to be participating in a film with explicit sexual content. Several prominent individuals came to her rescue, including Gus Van Sant, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Julianne Moore, in successfully urging CBC to retain Lee as a member of their staff.
In Sofia's office, the large framed characters on the wall behind her spell 'Help Me' in Chinese.
Asked why was it necessary for the actors to have real live sex, an act that can so easily be simulated for the cameras, director John Cameron Mitchell said, "I'd turn the question around and say, why is there an assumption that it shouldn't be in the film? No one says 'Why did the actor need to cry there? Why couldn't they have simulated it with menthol drops?' So by the same token, when you ask, 'Did you really need to penetrate?' Well, no. But I'd argue that the audience can tell whether the emotion is real. And if they don't buy it they step out and say, 'Oh God, here comes another fake sex scene.'"